Intimacy
by phaedraphelan
Summary: This piece deals with the things that logically come into play when two people like Sherlock and Joan become so close and when the attachment becomes so deep that boundaries simply disappear.


Elementary FanFiction—Intimacy

By: Phaedra Phelan

Rating: T

3,726 words; complete

E-mail: PrissyBNY

Disclaimer: This "Elementary" story is not-for-profit and is purely for entertainment purposes. The author and this site do not own the characters and are in no way affiliated with "Elementary," the actors, their agents, the producers, the CBS Television Network or any station or network carrying the show in syndication, or anyone in the industry.

Summary:

This story is really quite self-explanatory in view of where we are seeing the relationship between Sherlock and Joan developing. Feel free to comment if you like.

**Sherlock and Joan were becoming more and more aware of each other as man and woman. Of course, Sherlock, being a male had noted her outstanding physical beauty when they met and began to work together, but her manner of helping him had at first put him off and he didn't see her as a female consort. In the case of Joan, she had seen him as a man from the first day. In spite of his obvious lack of morals evidenced by his being attended by the prostitutes on that day, she was strangely attracted to him from the beginning. At first his status as a recovering addict held her at bay and then his unusually proclivities that became obvious to a house mate also kept her objective, but finally as his recovery became a reality, Joan saw only the man, his lean muscular physique with its tattoo markings, his piercing blue eyes and sensitive mouth, his long fingers and slender hands. She had seen too the evidence of his generous manhood when he was wearing the sweatpants he liked to lounge about in. Even at rest he was obviously quite substantial. As a doctor she had seen much male genitalia and had become quite steeled to the effect of seeing such, but this was somehow different. It reminded her of why she had always enjoyed watching male gymnasts do their routines or male ballet dancers in their tights with their protruding pouches.**

**Lately though, Sherlock had found himself constantly distracted by Joan in a sexual way. He was aware of her femininity, curious about her changes of temperament when she was menstruating, interested in calculating her cycle, measuring her need for companionship of a sexual nature. He did not know if she was taking the pill, but he thought perhaps she was. He found himself enjoying watching her move about the brownstone, especially when she marched away from him that way that she did with her hips switching from side to side. Her scent assaulted him sometimes unexpectedly when he passed by her bedroom or when she came in sweating from a jog and he felt powerless to keep his flesh from twitching.**

**And he no longer had any desire to make an appointment with prostitutes. Even prostitutes like the Lynch sisters held no interest to him. That kind of sex had lost its fascination. Actually he had used it only to clear his mind so that he could focus on his cases without distraction, with complete control of his flesh. He still had that . . . except when his thoughts strayed to Joan.**

**This day as they finished their work, Sherlock noticed a familiar pallor on Joan's face and he quickly calculated and realized that her menstruation was due.**

**She shook her head in disappointment with herself.**

**"What's wrong, Watson?"**

**"Nothing, I just don't feel well . . . girl stuff . . . and I meant to get some supplies before we came home today."**

**After the first month living with Sherlock, Joan had given up keeping him from knowing when she had her cycle. He had quickly figured it out anyway and seemed fascinated by the mere fact and function of it.**

**She got up wearily from her desk and started to go for her coat.**

**"You don't have to go. You have what you need."**

**"You know what I need?"**

**"You keep your things in the bathroom cupboard. I noticed about a week ago that you were practically out and I replenished your supply of tampons for you."**

**"Sherlock!"**

**Joan flushed in embarrassment.**

**"Don't be embarrassed, Watson. We live together. I can count to twenty-eight. It's very interesting to me to watch you deal with your catamenia, or your menses as some prefer to call the regular cycle of female humans. I find the female body quite fascinating in its function. You are obviously having discomfort now and I wouldn't want to see you have to go out and search for things that you need of that nature. **

**"Well, since you have 'deduced' so much of my personal business, I might as well tell you that I sometimes get really sick with my menstrual period, severe cramps, throwing up . . . the whole nine yards. And I feel like this is going to be one of those months. So please, just ignore me and let it run its course, okay? And thank you . . . for picking up my . . . supplies."**

**Sherlock stared at her wide-eyed, taking in what she said for a long moment, and then returned to his reading.**

**Joan started to make some of the special dandelion root tea she normally took for cramps, but Sherlock got up and took the things from her.**

**"I'll finish this for you. One of your Chinese specialties I would gather?"**

**"Yes, but I should have been taking it all day today."**

**Sherlock made the tea and brought it to her.**

**Joan soon had to retire to bed as she started having intense cramps. The cramps were just the prelude to her bleeding and she knew that would be the next thing to deal with. When she went into the bathroom, she checked her cabinet, and sure enough, there was a large box of the same brand of tampons that she used behind the nearly empty one in front of it.**

**Joan went into her room and closed the door, trying to reinforce to Sherlock her desire to suffer in private through her feminine woes. But later when Sherlock heard her moaning in her room, he came and knocked and then opened her door.**

**"Joan, what can I do to help?"**

**"Nothing! Nothing! Please Sherlock, just go!" she cried. **

**She was in fetal position, in tears with severe cramps. Sherlock backed up for a moment and then he said softly, "Would you like me to massage your feet?"**

**"No! I just want you to get out of here!"**

**Then Joan was swept with nausea, and jumped from her bed and ran past him to the bathroom and fell on her knees before the toilet and began to vomit.**

**Sherlock was right behind her and knelt beside her, holding her long hair out of the way, his arm around her as she retched violently into the toilet.**

**When she stood up, from vomiting, he saw blood streaming down her legs and it shook him to his foundations.**

**"Oh, God, I'm a mess here, Sherlock. Please excuse me."**

**"Certainly, I'll leave you to take care of yourself, Joan."**

**Sherlock stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door. Somehow seeing Joan's menstruation, such a private thing, something that he had never seen with any other woman, something that he had no right to see unless they were intimately involved, even married, affected him greatly. He knew that for a fact. He went downstairs and quickly out to the nearest pharmacy and searched for products to relieve female menstrual distress.**

**"Your wife must have a rough time of it," the middle-aged pharmacist said as a matter of fact. "I know what you're going through. My wife . . . I hate to see her suffer the way that she does. Try getting one of those heating pads and have her put it right on her stomach. It really helps. And I have three teen aged girls too! You know, they told my wife that the severe cramps would ease once she got married. Some women don't have them as bad when they're having regular intercourse. But not my wife! It made no difference."**

**"Yes, it can be difficult, I am sure," Holmes replied tersely, trying to avoid an extended conversation with the voluble pharmacist. "Give me one of those heating pads as well." He took his purchases and left quickly.**

**When he got back to the brownstone, he went upstairs to check on Watson and heard her still moaning on her bed. He knocked on her door and she did not answer. He knocked again and then slowly opened the door.**

**"Sherlock, I am so sick. Please just leave me alone."**

**"I picked up some Pamprin for you." He handed her the pills along with a glass of water and she took them, somewhat amazed.**

**"And the pharmacist suggested you use this heating pad . . . on your stomach to ease the cramps. I knew we didn't have one here so I purchased one."**

**He sat down on her bed, removed the heating pad from its packaging and plugged it in by her nightstand.**

**"Turn over, Joan, so I can put this . . . where you need it."**

**When Joan turned onto her back, he placed the heating pad on her lower abdomen and the covered her back up with her spread. **

**"Are you sure you don't want me to massage your feet?"**

**"No, please just leave me to my suffering, Sherlock."**

**"I'll leave you for a while, Joan, but I'll check back on you later tonight."**

**Joan stared at him in wonder at his care of her in such an intimate way before clutching the heating pad to her painful belly and giving herself up to her situation. **

**The next morning she wakened with the most intense cramps over and stared at herself in her mirror. Her eyes were puffy and she was still quite pale but she managed to pull herself together, put on her clothes and go downstairs. Sherlock was at the table having a bowl of cereal. There was tea made and, without a word, Sherlock poured a cup for her."**

**"Thank you, Sherlock . . . for helping me last night."**

**"I hope that you are feeling much better, Watson," Holmes said, somewhat at a loss for words. "I regret that as a woman the privilege of bearing offspring demands such a painful price from you."**

**"I'm better. I know that I look terrible," Joan said, putting her hands over her puffy eyes.**

**"You're . . . beautiful," Holmes stated as a matter of fact, "even when you are unwell and not your normal self. Your skin has a certain translucence somewhat like fine porcelain, that is quite lovely even though it fairly advertises that you are under par."**

**Joan dropped her head, uncomfortable with the train of the conversation.**

**"I did some reading and it is also said that women often don't suffer as much with menstruation when they're having intercourse regularly. Likewise, after having a child the symptoms lessen. No doubt you, as a physician, already know that. Have you ever thought of having a child, Watson?"**

**Joan looked at him for a long moment and they both went silent as the possible import of his words sank in.**

**"I . . . don't know if I can answer that question. I think that I will go back upstairs. I will see you later, Sherlock. I'm still not a hundred percent by a long shot so I'm going to rest for the remainder of the day, if it's all right with you."**

**Joan took her tea and went along upstairs to her bedroom, leaving Sherlock to ponder the changing relationship between them.**

**A little while later, Joan heard him knock at her door and then slowly open it.**

**"What, Sherlock?"**

**"I thought that a bit of reflexology on your feet might be helpful. I have done a bit more research. There are certain points on the foot that affect the uterus in a positive way."**

**This time Sherlock did not ask for permission to massage her feet. He sat down on her bed and reached for her left foot, took it onto his thigh and began to massage it most expertly before Joan could think of anything to rebuff him. Joan just relaxed and gave in. He was quite good and she soon fell asleep, not even aware when he changed to her right foot.**

**Sherlock looked at the tiny foot in his hand and squeezed it gently before he covered her feet and got up from the foot of her bed. Joan opened her eyes when he moved to leave and their eyes met.**

**"Do you want to leave, Sherlock?"**

**"Not really. I've never lived in such constant close proximity to a woman before. I . . . I don't want to intrude, but I wouldn't mind sitting here by your window for a while like I do sometimes. There is no case presently. And you might need something else."**

**"I guess I have no more feminine secrets from you after last night, Sherlock. You know more about me than any man I ever was close to."**

**"I don't know everything, Joan. There is the part that goes with what you are going through now, the sexual part."**

**Joan did not comment, but simply flushed and dropped her eyes.**

**Sherlock sat down by Joan's window in the chair there and Joan drifted back to sleep.**

**As Sherlock sat, he reflected on his relationship with Joan. He was so accustomed to her now that he felt strange when she was not with him. Her feet had been like ice and they had warmed under his touch. Sherlock suddenly felt very close to Joan, closer that he had ever felt to anyone. He had never been around Irene when she had her menses. She had so carefully arranged their times together that he could only guess at that sort of thing. But it was different with Joan. He wanted to lie down with her in her bed and just hold her in his arms, close to his heart. He could see that she was shivering with chills and he wanted to warm her body with his.**

**He got up from his chair and came to her bedside.**

**"Joan, what can I do?"**

**"Nothing, I . . . I'm cold, Sherlock. I'm just cold and miserable."**

**Sherlock lifted up her covers and kicked his slippers off, removed his jeans and climbed into bed beside her and when he put his arms around her and Joan snuggled under his warmth, he was gratified that her shivering soon began to ease. He had absolute no negative sensitivity about cuddling with Joan when she was menstruating. He had seen her in pain and he had even seen her bleeding and somehow he felt closer to her than he had ever felt to any other person. He felt strangely like a loving husband with his wife in the situation and the feeling was good.**

**When he discerned from the sound of Joan's gentle snoring pattern that she was indeed sleeping, Sherlock fell asleep with her in his arms. **

**Joan wakened a couple hours later and was loathe to leave the warmth of Sherlock's body, but her system was functioning now and she needed to attend to herself.**

**"You needed to get up, Watson?" Sherlock asked sleepily when she came back to bed.**

**"I had to. I didn't want to make a mess here . . . especially with you in my bed. You already have seen much too much of me, I fear."**

**"I can't imagine seeing too much of you. You have seen me at my worst, shivering with cold flashes from withdrawal, pacing with akathisia, torturing myself with pain just to feel something again, seeing me served by whores who do not care about me in the least, who will handcuff me and lash me if I ask them to do it. I am surprised that you did not run out of this brownstone in the face of some of the things that you have seen here. In me, you have seen a man who has sunk to levels of degeneracy that you perhaps had imagined, but never seen."**

**"But I don't think that is the core person of you, Sherlock. If I did, I would have left after the first couple of weeks here."**

**"What do you think is the core person of me? I would be curious," Sherlock said as he lay next to her in her bed.**

**"You are a brilliant, crazy man who has the capacity to care about people he doesn't even know and the compulsion to help them. You let me see you indulge in those things that you do to see if it will turn me away in revulsion. You have tested me to the limit, Sherlock, but I will pass any test that you bring, because I know what you really are. The episodes of ****_akathisia _****that you were suffering are just symptoms of your healing. They will go away. They are already going away."**

**"How do you know that they are going away?"**

**"Because I study you, Sherlock, just as you study me. You may know what is going on in my ovaries, but I know a lot about what is going on in your head . . . and I think that I am learning something about your heart in the process."**

**"Do I have a heart, Watson? Is it still there? I feel so empty sometimes. I have thought about throwing myself off the roof of this brownstone, but I deduced that it might not kill me instantly. And besides, there would be no one to take care of my bees," he smirked.**

**"I would miss you terribly if you did that, Sherlock."**

**"You . . . you would miss me?"**

**"Yes! Now shut up and hug me, Sherlock. I am starting to shiver again." **

**Sherlock drew Joan close, encompassing her in his warm embrace and they were both quiet for several minutes, even though they had not fallen asleep again.**

**"I think that I have begun to have 'normal' feelings again, Watson. And they are directed at you. Would that surprise you?"**

**"What do you feel would be normal?**

**"I see you and I . . . I . . . my body wants to be with your body. I am attracted to you sexually and the attraction is quite powerful. I don't quite understand it because I never have felt exactly like this before. I liked you first, Watson, even when you thought that I disliked you, and then for quite a while I have realized that what I feel is more than 'like you.' Do you understand what I am saying?"**

**"Didn't you 'more than like' Irene? You say that she was the love of your life."**

**"I know now that that was a passionate infatuation. I completely bypassed the phase of 'liking her' because it was all passion from the beginning with me. I don't know what it was with her. Perhaps to her I was like the mouse that a cat plays with to amuse itself before it goes in for the kill. I don't know. But what I feel with you and for you is different, very different." Sherlock whispered the words into her ear as he held her against his chest. **

**"What do you feel with me, Sherlock? Tell me what you are talking about."**

**Joan turned in his arms so that she was now facing him and looking into his eyes. They did not speak further, but just stared at each other till both of them felt their eyes flutter shut as their lips met gently in a long tender kiss. Finally their lips parted and they just lay there quietly, breathing each other in, and realizing the full import of what had happened to them.**

**Sherlock flushed and dropped his eyes as he spoke softly, so softly that Joan could barely hear him if his words had not been so clearly stated. That is when Joan saw the beauty of his long lashes and realized that his pupils were dilated so that there was just the thinnest rim of blue surrounding them.**

**"I love you, Joan. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone. Could you possibly feel as I do? Can you feel me loving you?"**

**Joan was unable to speak in the face of Sherlock's words.**

**"If you do not feel as I do, please just tell me, Joan. I will have to accept what you say and be thankful that we have become the close friends and partners that we have become and . . . and leave it at that."**

**Sherlock's eyes were full of his emotions as he waited for her answer.**

**"I think I have loved you since the day we met, Sherlock."**

**Grateful tears spilled over and ran down Sherlock's cheeks and Joan simply kissed them away.**

**"When your body is back up to par and you feel that you can withstand my full attention, will you please tell me when we may completely address these feelings we have?"**

**"Yes, Sherlock, yes," Joan said.**

**Sherlock kissed her forehead and clasped her cheeks in his hands as they lay so close together that her cold feet were between his warm ones. **

**"God, your feet are cold, woman," he said chuckling as he hugged her tightly.**

**He suddenly jumped up from her bed and went to his room and came back in a couple minutes with something in his hand. He pulled the covers off her feet and took her feet in his hands and began to put his favorite bee socks on her, patted her feet and covered them up again before lying down beside her again.**

**"Now that should be better, eh?"**

**"I love you, Sherlock," Joan said, taking his hand and placing it against her midriff. "I do love you. I feel like I was just 'pinned.' "**

**"Pinned?"**

**"It's what American young people do when they decide they are going to go steady. They wear something, often a club pin or even a piece of clothing that belongs to their special someone."**

**"Well, consider yourself 'pinned,' my dear Joan."**

**There was nothing more to say as they lay quietly together in Joan's bed, but there was much to think about.**

**The End**

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